I also mentioned how creating a dashboard used to be a complicated task, but it much easier today thanks to tools like Dasheroo.

Today, I want to show you how easy it is to get started with Dasheroo.

Sign Up For a Free Account

Step one is to set up an account. Dasheroo provides a generous free account (they call it their “Tall” plan) which includes:

Unlimited Users

Data View: 30 Days From Account Creation

4 Dashboards

12 Data Insights

1 Mashup Insight (more about this later)

Dashboard Templates

Sharing & Commenting

Presentation (TV) Mode

Knowledge Base Support

For information about the other Dasheroo plans available, visit their pricing page

Your Dashboard

Once you sign up and login to your account, you will see a sample dashboard named “My Dashboard”. This dashboard contains sample widgets. Dasheroo calls these widgets “Insights”, which is a great name, since that’s what you are after, right?

Let me point out a couple more things before we move on. You can create more than one dashboard. This can be helpful for organizing your insights. To create a new dashboard, click on the drop down in the top, left corner.

You also use this drop down to switch between dashboards.

Clicking on the dashboard name will open a dialog where you can change the name and/or description of your dashboard.

To delete a dashboard, click on the gear icon

You will use the “+ Add Insights” button to add new insight widgets to your dashboard.

The remaining menu items are pretty self explanatory. Go ahead and poke around on them now.

Adding Insights to Your Dashboard

To get started building your first dashboard, click on the + Add Insights button. This will bring up a dialog box with three main tabs – Insights, Templates, and Mashups.

For your first dashboard, go to the Templates tab and select the Marketing Maven template. Unless, of course, you are a MacGyver fan, in which case your not really listening to me any more, are you?

I’m suggesting the Marketing Maven template because it is a great way to quickly see the different types of inisghts available to you.

Click the + Install button for the Marketing Maven template. Dasheroo will walk you through the process of connecting to the various accounts it will pull data from.

Tip – while not necessary, I find it helpful to open each account (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in it’s own browser tab before beginning the process of connecting to Dasheroo. Agencies and assistants managing accounts for several clients will find this makes the connection process go more smoothly.

Once you connect your accounts, click on the “Next” button on the bottom, right of the page. Dasheroo will ask you if you are ready to create a new dashboard with 12 insights. Don’t worry, your ready. Click the Save and Connect button.

Adjusting Your Dashboard

Voila! You have your first dashboard. Dasheroo laid out your dashboard nicely, but you can rearrange it to suit your needs and preferences.

You can rearrange items on your dashboard simply by dragging them to a new location. Hover your mouse over the title bar of the insight, until your cursor turns into a four arrowed cross:

You can also resize an insight by grabbing the bottom, right corner (your cursor will turn into a double headed arrow):

To edit information about the insight, click the gear icon on the bottom left of the insight.

Mashups

Dasheroo has a special type of insight called a mashup. Mashups take metrics from two different apps and plot them on the same chart. Mashups help you answer questions like:

Are we growing our Facebook audience as fast as our Twitter followers?

Do we get more engagement of Facebook or LinkedIn?

Are our efforts on Facebook generating traffic to our website.

To add a mashup to your dashboard, follow the same steps for adding an insight, but go to the mashup tab of the insights dialog.

Next Steps

I hope this post has shown how easy it is to get started building your business and social media dashboards using Dasheroo.

The Marketing Maven template that we used contains only a sample of the different insights that are available. Try adding some more insights to your dashboard.

Once you get a feel for what you can do with Dasheroo, take a step back and think about the key numbers you need to know to grow your business. Then think about what actions you will take when those numbers are below, right on, and above your targets. What other information and metrics will you need in order to adjust? Pretty dashboards are nice, but dashboards that help you grow your businessandsave time are nicer.

In the next post, I’ll show you how you can add insights for metrics that don’t appear in the built in insights.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like some help setting up your dashboard.